The metal teeth of the mall elevator bit through the noise of the afternoon. The toes of my Mary Janes rested on the carpet, still carrying the polished delicacy of something that had just stepped out of a shop window.
The moment his heavy leather shoe came down, “Sorry” slipped out of my mouth. For a second, I could almost hear glass breaking somewhere inside my throat.
He froze for a few beats, staring at me like an NPC had suddenly gone off-script.
“You’re... really weird, aren’t you?”
The question struck the stainless-steel walls. Seven or eight pairs of eyes hardened into searchlights, baking the blush on my cheeks into caramel. He lifted one shoulder toward his friend, as though showing off a rare specimen.
I shrank into the corner, wanting to crumple myself into a thumbtack, only to catch sight of the timid stain spreading through the hem of my dress in the mirror.
Why am I like this again?
The hum of a silver needle puncturing a balloon rang against my eardrums.
He was the one who had crushed my nail art, yet my vocal cords always switched to the apology gramophone before my brain could catch up.
The elevator chime snapped through the air like a finger snap breaking reason in two.
“Are girls these days all this weird?”
In the mirror stood a girl in a pink rhinestone slip dress, a pearl necklace pressing painfully into her collarbone.
She looked perfectly normal.
So why was she always saying sorry to the whole world?
It was as if my existence itself were an accident that required an apology.
The Safety I Bought With Sorry
At seven that evening, the car door shut, and the heatwave shoved my disappointment into the back seat with me.
“You’re... really weird, aren’t you?”
The words were still frosting over their sugar coating. Every time I swallowed them, the tip of my tongue tasted faintly of rust.
When I got out, my Mary Janes shattered the reflection of a streetlight. A puddle suddenly kissed the hem of my dress with a dark lipstick mark.
I crouched down and said “Sorry” to the puddle.
A cold laugh of wind seeped from the cracks in the asphalt, like a fingernail scraping across glass.
The moment the automatic door brushed my elbow, my body automatically spat out the password:
“Sorry.”
The sensor light trembled, like a blink that had failed to recognize me.
As the doors slid open with a thin creak, my apology broke into tiny points of light, drifting between the glass curtain walls with nowhere to land.
At the crosswalk, a stranger bumped into me.
“Sorry” came out on reflex.
He frowned and stepped away, his gaze brushing past my shoulder blade as though flicking off an irritating speck of dust.
A tide rose suddenly behind my eyes. I bit down hard on the levee of my lashes, afraid that if one tear fell, it might startle the dusk along the entire street.
The milk tea still held a little warmth at the bottom of the cup, yet in my hand it felt like a dead battery.
Twilight gave me a soft-focus rim of gold while the lace hem of my dress trembled in the wind. This exquisite costume wrapped around an extra who had wandered onto the wrong set.
Those “sorry”s that played on their own were rusted clasps in my soul, clicking open at every collision.
But who, exactly, was I confessing to?
For the mud staining the hem of my dress? For the shadow cast by my existence itself? Or for every sob caught in my throat, because even that had to be tamed into obedient foam?
I Confessed the Crime of Existing to the Night
At one in the morning, the blanket on the window seat had become a cocoon for time. Neon from the bridge slipped through the glass, scattering broken constellations that drifted across the wall like a storybook taken apart.
With my knees pressed to my chest, I folded myself into the smallest unit of pain.
All those “sorry”s suddenly came flooding out of the back alleys of memory:
An apology to a button was sugar. An apology to a droplet was snow. A plea for pardon to the air itself was smoke.
They piled into a mountain inside my chest, pressing my breath down to a thread-thin tremor.
Why did my heartbeat have to submit a petition for pardon to the world?
My fingertip traced the words carved into the corner of the wall:
“You do not deserve to be loved.”
Each word was like winter bark split open, seeping bitter sap at the touch.
I had carved them there with my nails during the worst stretch of being ill. Even now, they still flash with the cold glint of a dagger.
The tears suddenly broke loose, rolling like pearls torn from their string across the patent leather of my Mary Janes.
I buried my face in the ravine of the blanket’s folds, my crying woven by the fibers into a blurred echo. My soul was like a sheet of letter paper torn open again and again. Every sob left another crease.
I remembered the nights when Bianbian, the chinchilla I had grown up with, was still here. He would tap the back of my hand lightly with his soft paw pads.
It wasn’t comfort.
It was two lost stars crossing by accident and giving each other their halos.
Now even that faint light had gone out. Somehow, I had lost even the right to confess to a chinchilla.
Time lost its weight on the window seat. Space collapsed inward.
Why did breathing itself feel like stealing oxygen that did not belong to me? Why did every moment of being alive feel like asking the world for forgiveness?
The neon kept tracing riddles across the wall, playing an absurd piece of string music for the girl curled into herself.
And my fingertips kept slowly exploring the carved words, until my fingerprints wore themselves into tiny flecks of blood-red stardust, as though I had finally heard fate answer in a voice barely there.
The First Pardon I Gave Myself
Morning had only just begun to wake. Crystals of dried tears clung like salt to the corner of the blanket on the window seat.
I rubbed my swollen eyes and stood. A strand of dawn, fine as golden thread, took me by the hand and led me out of the prison where the night’s dreams had gathered and gone stagnant.
The creases of my new dress curled at the hem like sighs left over from another year. At the street corner, I stood beneath the green light and let it gild my figure with a thin layer of gold.
A girl in a hurry suddenly collided with my shoulder. The bread in her bag nearly fell, and when she looked up, panic splashed across her pupils.
“I’m so sorry!”
The “It’s fine” already waiting at my lips suddenly stopped, like a stream halting at the edge of a cliff.
This time, it was not about pardoning someone else. A clear sky had genuinely opened inside my chest.
“It’s okay.”
I heard my own voice pass through the morning mist, still slightly hoarse from the tears of the night before, yet steady as though dawn had ironed it smooth.
A second later, I still gathered the hem of my dress lightly in my fist, like a small animal only just learning not to run.
But this time, I did not lower my head.
I did not step back.
At last, I stood inside the spectrum of the world, even if only at its outermost edge.
Bianbian’s photograph slept quietly in my bag. Today, I would not disturb his dreams.
It was my turn to hold the umbrella now, keeping the sound of rain from the human world away from him.
I still did not know whether the tears from that night counted as the levee giving way. Nor did I believe a single moment could rewrite years of accumulated snow.
But some “sorry”s should have retired long ago, and some forgiveness had to be kept for the person I had been yesterday.
Now, on behalf of all the nights I had spent bowed, let me declare this to the world:
“Even if you do not apologize, you still deserve to be loved by this world.”
🌙 Why do I apologize so much?
Sometimes people apologize too much because “sorry” becomes a preemptive way to keep interactions smooth, reduce the chance of upsetting someone, or make themselves easier to be around. The apology can start arriving before any actual mistake does.
At its deepest, over-apologizing can become a way of making yourself smaller—until it begins to feel like apologizing for existing.
Have you ever said sorry to a door, a puddle, or even someone who bumped into you—and suddenly wondered what you were actually apologizing for?
You can leave it here quietly.
No apology needed.
I read every comment.
This made me feel so seen, you have a way with words, thank you for sharing this piece. May we never feel sorry for existing ❤️
This one hit different — I think because I saw so much of myself in it. That reflex to apologize before anyone's even upset, like existing itself needs clearing first. I don't think I've seen someone put language to that so honestly before.